At Capium, we thrive to support and encourage our customers’ to succeed. We are proud to announce and congratulate Cubed Accountancy for its nomination for this year’s Accounting Excellence award!
Cubed Accountancy was founded in January 2019 by Mark Munnelly ACA and co-founder Richard Colwell ACA. That was when they submitted their very first sales invoice and the company gradually grew from there on.
Eventually, their accounting practice was doing so well that by the summer of 2020 they hired their first junior staff members, and by January 21 they had built their first admin team. Cubed Accountancy now has a team consisting of 15 employees. Before they knew it, they had to move from a tiny office on a farm, to a large office space in Harpenden, which they are planning to fill up soon!
“At the time, our client base was mostly sole traders. And then we expanded into owner-managed businesses. Then during the first lockdown, we either paused or halved people’s monthly subscriptions to us, just because there was an element of panic and we wanted to try and help if we could.
This massively worked in our favour and when everything had settled down a little more with our existing clients we were able to build our new client base really quickly and it was referral after referral and we were able to expand to the point that we began taking on more and more staff members.” Mark Munnelly, Partner at Cubed Accountancy.
Capium had the pleasure to conduct a Q&A session with Mark to find out what makes Cubed Accountancy unique and what lead to the practice being nominated for Fast-Track Firm of the Year by Accounting Excellence:
What would you say were the biggest contributing factors to your success?
“We’ve had some really good clients come to us through referrals. We like to speak to our clients first to fully understand their needs, so we know how to help them. It’s also important to get the correct type of clients that you want for your practice as it makes your job a lot more fulfilling, and you can spend more time with your client to cater to their needs and the happier they are with your service! That’s why most of our clients have come through referrals. But then it all comes down to us delivering a good service; they wouldn’t recommend us if we didn’t deliver a good service. We have also managed to build a good team of professionals that understand our ethos and are dedicated to our clients and company values.
And then it comes down to just hard work and teamwork; it’s not just handed to you, me and Richard have had to put the hours in and understand the responsibilities we have to our team… and it’s important to move with the times. We pushed that and encouraged all the staff too. We want to be a modern accountancy firm that embraces technology where possible. If there’s a better way, we are more than happy to listen to it and completely change to that as well. Not all the best ideas are your own.”
What would you say were your biggest challenges?
“For us, I would say staffing. We were so used to just me and Richard when we first started, and we just had to manage our own time. And between us, we got everything done. Then getting into the practice of having a team around you and delegating, passing that work down, but also passing on the ethos of the company; that we try and understand the business, try and speak to the clients, always pick up the phone. So, I would have to say the biggest challenge was finding good staff you could delegate your work to.”
You’re an accountancy practice who succeeded during stressful conditions, like COVID for example; what advice would you offer to other small businesses or people starting in the accountancy practice?
“I’ve been very lucky because I’ve got a great business partner and we can bounce innovative ideas and daily tasks off each other. So, I’ve seen lots of accountants and other businesses try and look for business mentors whereas, I’ve been lucky because the two of us work well together and have the same vision. The main advice I’d give for the accountancy practice is don’t leave it too long to take on staff. For example, we probably left it a little too long to take on our first recruit (Megan) and we certainly left it too late to take on the second one. And of course, software is vital; when we first started, we didn’t have the funds to purchase software licences and there were a lot of manual processes. We then grew quickly and didn’t put enough emphasis on systems and processes, so we had to almost stop to put good systems in place. My advice would be to find the right software to suit your practice’s needs. If you can put some good systems in place while you’re growing, or even before, then it’s well worth it.”
How has software contributed to your success?
“Hugely. Absolutely. It was a complete game changer for us. Be it from Capium, which enables us to do all the filing and all the software in terms of the year-end accounts for everyone. But also, we’ve now started using it a lot more for our practice management.
Now again, that comes down to the utilisation of staff; Richard and I didn’t use the software properly at first because we didn’t have the time to familiarise ourselves with it. We were just too busy doing accounts and trying to get invoices out the door and paid, so we brought in the admin team lead by Catherine and Siobhan which was a complete game changer for us. They were able to put all our data and information into the Cloud, and now we’re feeling the benefits of having that task management system in place; we meet up on Mondays to look through upcoming tasks and that helps us keep on top of things. We also use other software like Xero and QuickBooks for our bookkeeping and the ability to produce management accounts promptly and detailed for clients.”
What are the benefits of using Cloud-based accounting software?
“The ability to file sets of accounts and self-assessments in particular. When we first started, we didn’t use Cloud software. We used to work it through the HMRC portal which was painstaking. However, we didn’t know anything different at that stage.
So, I didn’t realise how painful it was, but the ability to file accounts and the flow of information such as when you prepare the accounts and then it flows into the tax computation is excellent.
Using Cloud software has become a huge time saver. It just really works. It’s been a big, big help.”
Has software helped you to communicate better with your clients?
“Funnily enough, we had a meeting about that today. We’ve hired a new manager who started this week called Catherine and she was asking the same thing. We have been using Capium’s CapiSign and CapiScan recently, which have allowed us to get in touch with our clients directly and it has made a huge change in terms of communication. We will continue to use that to connect with our clients, especially around the quarter ends. And during the self-assessment season, we will be reminding more people.”
How have you found the support to be like with Capium?
“That was the reason we moved to Capium. I was using another software, which I can’t even remember the name of, and it worked on a ticket basis and the tickets took a long time to get resolved. Now I know that Capium also has a ticket system, but it seems to work a lot better, and you get a response in less than an hour… sometimes almost immediate. And if it is an emergency, I can get on the phone with our onboarding manager. I have recommended Capium loads of times because of this.”
Capium wishes Cubed Accountancy good luck, and we will be rooting for you!
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